Thesis Review Part Three: Reader-text assemblages

Part One of this ‘thesis review’ introduced the philosophical and theoretical concepts that guided the research undertaken in my thesis. Part Two elaborated upon these ideas- paying particular attention to the concept of the rhizome-and suggested that the field of Comics Studies could be considered as rhizomatic. It then went on to demonstrate how approaches to studying superheroes that utilised structuralist theories and/or analysed the superhero comic in terms of representation and ideology could be understood as broadly humanist and based on an arboreal model of knowledge whereby the ‘meaning’ of the superhero could be reduced to a single explanatory trunk. It then went on to argue for a Post/Humanist approach to superhero comics that, rather than an arboreal model, adopted a rhizomatic approach. To aid this understanding a cultural history of the posthuman body in superhero comic was adopted. It was then demonstrated how this moves the analysis of the superhero away from ideology by understanding the development of the superhero through the Golden, Silver, Dark and Modern Ages of comic books in terms of historically situated assemblages.

 If the rhizomatic cultural history was suggested as a theoretical corrective to the limitations of ideological analyses then it was also important to address the implied reader at the mercy of ideology in these approaches. As such my thesis involved another strand in which I interviewed comic book readers about their views on the superhero and posthumanism more generally. This was seen as a methodological corrective to the problems outlined in Part Two.

In this section then I intend to familiarise the reader with historical approaches to the question of texts and reader/audiences. Having done this I next offer a model of text-reader relations that draws on the concept of assemblages outlined in Part One. Because of the ethical issues involved and the fact it’s not officially complete yet I will not be presenting the data from my interviews here on the blog at this time. Instead this review presents a brief history of audience studies, highlighting some of the dualities that have informed scholarly understanding of reader/text relations, and how these dualities follow on from the same historically established philosophical dualities that critical Post/Humanism is generally engaged in critiquing. As such I offer a model of reader-text relations as an assemblage, illustrated by a brief overview of historically situated comic-reader assemblages in the Golden, Silver, Dark and Modern Ages of comics.

Grinders, hackers and makers versus the “grim meathook future”

In an interesting rumination at transhumanblog the author muses that:

As the imminent emergence of a transhuman society begins to take to shape and moves increasingly from the realm of theory to fact, transhumanists and futurists are going to have to start asking some hard questions. No longer can we focus simply on the technological challenges of creating such a future, but we must also consider what those technologies imply for society and the international community. Much has been written and said about the threat of uneven distribution of these technologies…Little has been done to address these concerns though, and what has been done tends to focus on inequality within the developed nations that most futurists are from.

This is an interesting point and worth elaborating upon. Hence this post. The author above is right to raise the point that such critiques “focus on inequality within the developed nations that most futurists are from“. Given that the libertarian technological utopia espoused by some transhumanists is only made possible by a globalised economy we would do well to address the question of global disparities. As the author above goes on to write:

it is of paramount importance that we focus strong attention on the technological and infrastructural gap that exists been post-industrial and developing nations. Unless we take strong, positive action to address these issues, transhumanism will not be the global revolution we hope it to be, and we will instead take the form of the techno-oligarchs that we fear.

In a similar register Joshua Ellis has noted that:

There are nearly a billion Facebook users in the world, and half a billion Twitter users (though of course there’s probably nearly a 90% overlap between those two). Those are indeed astonishing numbers, but the problem is that sometime around March 12, 2012, we passed seven billion people living on Earth. That means that the vast majority of humans aren’t on Facebook or Twitter. The majority of people have mobile phones, but there are more people still who don’t have mobile phones than use Facebook.

Most of us never see these people, of course, except as faces briefly glimpsed in the background of news footage. They are outside our Big Room. Not because we’re intentionally keeping them out, you understand; at least, not really on any overt institutional level. Basically. We don’t do that any more, and we feel good about it.

It’s just that living in the Big Room is expensive, you see…and, well, these people can’t afford it. They don’t have Facebook because they can’t afford the technological artifacts that would allow them to be on Facebook. They don’t tweet about how much the new version of iOS sucks, because they don’t have any way to tweet and they damn sure don’t have a device that will run iOS, because these devices cost more than these people often make in a year.

For all the utopian dreaming of  transhumanist philosophers it remains the case that much of it remains rooted in a Western libertarian tradition.

Thesis Review Part Two: Superheroes, rhizomes, representation and ideology

Welcome to part two of my thesis autopsy, where I pick apart the first draft of my PhD and try to remember just exactly what it was I was trying to study when I began. As always, this is the blog and not the thesis itself so while there’s a lot of references in what follows its also likely to slip into a more conversational style. Let’s just jump straight in.

My thesis began with two broad questions: what could the development of the superhero tell us about posthumanism, and how did readers of superhero comics relate to the posthuman? In Part One of this thesis review I pointed out that answering those questions first required clarifying the epistemological and ontological assumptions underlying them. So it was that Part One introduced several concepts borrowed from Delueze and Guattari that served as the theoretical guide for undertaking this research project. In this part I want to re-introduce Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the rhizome (touched on briefly in part one) and how it differs from traditional models of thought and culture.

 These ideas will then be illustrated through a discussion of the filed of Comics Studies as rhizome, and also how many scholars approaching the superhero have relied on structuralist analyse (often accompanied by an ideological critique). Such approaches, whether positive or negative in their final reading of the ‘meaning’ of the superhero, are presented as arboreal or tree-like. I argue that such approaches can be characterised as Humanist. The rhizome is then offered as an alternative, Post/Humanist model for thinking about superheroes.

The article then goes on discuss how Foucault’s notion of discourse operates within a rhizome. Several theoretical (and occasionally methodological) objections are raised to move comics analysis away from questions of representation and identity politics, and an argument put forth for the production of a rhizomatic cultural history of the posthuman superhero body.

Thesis Review Part One: Assemblages and Rhizomes

Hello you! There’s been no blog posts for a while. Comedy and academia have been eating up my time. In a few days time (Friday 15^th to be exact) the world premier of Woodward and Jeffery: Laughter on the Outskirts will be on at the Leicester Comedy Festival. This looming comedy deadline has had the added benefit of forcing me to go full pelt at completing a draft of my thesis beforehand. (UPDATE: It’s been and gone and I wrote about it here).

It’s been a long three years, and its not over yet. But with a full initial draft of my snappily titled thesis Producing and Consuming the Posthuman Body in Superhero Comics finally in the bag, now seems a good time to present some of the ideas from it on the blog. A ‘thesis review’ where the monster’s still dying corpse can be dissected and unimaginable, as-yet-unnamed organs extracted from its still-warm carcass and held up to the light: “Now look what we have here”, I will say, rubbing the ungodly creature’s black blood on my lab coat.  As ever, the reader is forewarned that this is the blog and not the thesis itself, so expect a potentially unpalatable mix of personal literary style and academic writing. Although to be fair if you are still with me after the whole monster autopsy thing then we’ll probably be okay. So lets begin.

In short I set out three and a bit years ago (or perhaps 34) to investigate two related questions. Firstly, how had the figure of the posthuman body developed in superhero comics? Or to put it more accurately, in what ways did the development of the superhero relate to a wider discourse of the posthuman body? A discussion of how the posthuman body of the superhero has developed can be found elsewhere on the blog (here and here) so will only be touched on occasionally in this piece

Secondly, I wanted to know what sense comic book readers made of the posthuman body. For example, did a familiarity with the superhero genre make one more or less amenable to the idea of human enhancement as espoused by Transhumanism? The question of reader-text relationships is addressed briefly below but the more elaborate discussion it requires will have to wait until Part Three of this series. Part Two takes the theoretical concepts presented below and demonstrates the advantages of applying them to the study of superhero comics.

In Part One of this ‘thesis review’ I instead want to present some of the philosophical concepts that informed the approach I took in my thesis to the posthuman body in terms of both theory and methodology. Or to put it another way, the following discussion is about what separates a ‘critical analysis’ or ‘cultural theory’ of superhero comics from, say, reviewing them. Long story short: the questions of how superheroes have developed and what readers get from them are not simple to answer. Or, rather, may lead to a multitude of, often potentially conflicting, answers to those questions depending on the assumptions the questioner starts out with. As such this article lays out my epistemological and ontological framework.

As Voltaire once said, “if you wish to converse with me, first define your terms”.

Ready to define some terms? Let’s go!

Man, if only there were a list of Posthuman Documentaries…

I thought it might be useful and entertaining to compile a list of documentaries that deal with posthumanism/transhumanism. Being absurdly busy with finishing up the PhD and gearing up for the Edinburgh Festival I haven’t bothered with any commentary on them but hopefully its useful to have them all gathered in one place. Suffice it to say that naturally they vary in detail and focus but never the less anyone wishing to know more about the subject might want to start with these. Especially if you are too lazy to read a book. Most of them are available online so links are included.

Posthuman Social Policy

One of the things that comes up when people ask about my thesis (an action they soon regret-I do go on) is a sense of surprise. Not just because I managed to secure funding. More because the idea of the posthuman still has a whiff of science-fiction-with emphasis on the latter- to the general public. Almost everyone is familiar with say, Arnie’s cyborg The Terminator or the super-humans of The Avengers, but the notion that such beings might become a reality are generally dismissed as either ridiculous or thousands of years away. In fact, one of the problems any proponent of Transhumanism must face is the inability of most current humans to think beyond their own lifetime; or to think in deep time, if you like.

Of course, writers like Ray Kurzweill  and others argue for an exponential development of science and technology (see here for more on ‘accelerated change’. In which case our post human future is not a question of deep time but one that requires a public debate in the present. Current developments in techno-science push us ever closer to a point beyond the existential dilemma of knowing who we are to the ethical question of knowing what we want to become. Choosing which of the qualities we have come to define as human we wish to retain. If any.

At any rate, that is a discussion for another post. What I want to do here is present a list of various governmental and parliamentary reports that relate to the development of the posthuman. This is not a complete list, I’m sure there are many more of these from various countries and research groups, so if anyone knows of any please do get in touch and pass them on. I’m sure there’s an interesting comparative study to be done of the local differences of approach. A flavour of such differences may be gleaned here. I’m going to put them in reverse chronological order because I want to end by highlighting the importance of a public debate about post/transhumanism. More importantly, I hope that this list at least provides sceptics with evidence that these issues are no longer the sole province of science-fiction. These are real governmental reports addressing real questions. And of course they are all hyper-linked for your reading and research pleasure. The search for a posthuman social policy starts here!

Posthumanism/Transhumanism/Superheroes: A Bibliography

With the deadline for my thesis looming I have been going through the various bits and pieces and ensuring all the references are there. It occurred to me that at least one bibliography, covering the literature review on Posthumaism and Transhumanism, might be of interest to readers of this blog. I will of course put the full bibliography for the thesis up at some point after i’ts completed. In the meantime my Google Library contains several of the works I have used as well as more besides dealing with posthumanism, the body, superheroes and comics studies more generally. I try to keep the Google library updated whenever I come across across a new text so it is becoming quite a useful resource. They can be found by clicking here.

On a related note the next Comics are Magic will be a bibliography of works relating to religion, magic, mythology and superheroes. That should be up in the next couple of weeks. And since I have nothing published as yet, I can at least draw attention to my own two papers dealing with superheroes, posthumanism and Transhumanism; Producing and Consuming the Posthuman Body in Superhero Narratives and The Silver Age Superhero as Psychedelic Shaman. Or if you’d prefer just to read the abstracts for those two just click here.

Specifically, this post presents a list of those works that directly invoke the comic book superhero to talk about posthumanism and/or transhumanism (but not the many works which merely mentioned superheroes in passing). Such approaches are relatively rare, at least in academic terms, so I hope this list proves useful to anyone thinking of exploring this intersection.Where possible, I’ve tried to hyperlink them to their source. Hopefully some day my own thesis can be added to this list. It goes without saying that my thesis would not exist at all without these preceding works. Hopefully this short bibliography will prove of inspiration and use to others. So let’s begin.

Tpot Freedom Sessions and The Stand: It’s been a busy week…

Hello humans.

It’s been a while. Sit down, let’s catch up. Tea? Coffee? How do you take that? There you go. Some biscuits on that plate too if you want. Just help yourself. No not those ones. They are for me.

So let’s begin. Its been a busy week. Thesis continues apace as the October deadline looms. Hopefully when I start editing it down-because its way, way, too long right now- the academic excess fat can be put up here on the blog. I believe the theory is that they should be turned into journal articles to further my academic standing. Or something. But information wants to be free! And besides, the blog affords more opportunities for digression and humour.  Because obviously I pepper my academic writing with knob gags.

Its standard academic practice! Everyone does it!

My actual point being that I have nothing to report from the realm of research for a while. But when I do, you will be first to know. I know you have an unquenchable thirst for writing that considers the evolution of the superhero through the lens of posthumanist theories. Considering the evolution of the superhero through the lens of posthumanist theories is very fashionable right now. It’s all those hipster kids down at the discotheque ever talk about on their blackphones and i-berries.

For now though: Comedy News!

ITEM! Started the week with my first ever open spot at The Stand‘s Red Raw night. The Stand, for those who don’t know is a comedy club in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Newcastle. I was on in Edinburgh, which is an amazing place and where I have seen two of my comedy pantheon-Stewart Lee and Simon Munnery- performing. So being in the same Green Room as those two, and many more besides, was very exciting. basically the Stand’s ethos is that they take  comedy seriously, paradoxical as that sounds.

So yes, it was an open spot night, but it was an open spot night at proper comedy club The Stand. So I was more nervous than I’ve been in a long time and desperate to make a good impressions. A nice tight five minutes with no lulls. And while I don’t know if I necessarily managed that it was great fun and with a proper audience, a roomful rather than a handful. Not that performing to a handful isn’t fun and instructive itself of course.

It seems to have gone down well though. I’ve been offered a few more open spots anyway, (dates can be found at the bottom of the post) including a ten minute spot at the end of July. So I’ve gone up by 5 minutes! Sort of. For that one spot anyway. It is, of course, entirely possible that a full ten minutes at a Stand Red Raw night might be the dizziest height my stand up career ever reaches. This is fine. two years ago it never would have occurred to me that i would be anything but an audience member in there anyway. So I guess there’s a lesson in there about following you dreams and you will one day shit rainbows or some such. Got a thing you love to do? Or have always suspected you would love to do? Go out, dear reader, do it now! For life is short, and one day you will be nought but dust.

(This is  why I failed as a motivational speaker)

ITEM! Wednesday night I spent an enjoyable hour and a half talking to Peter Wood for his new series of podcasts. You can keep up with Pete on his blog or follow him on twitter and see where he’s playing next. If you can bear to listen to it an hour and a half of me talking about comedy-lord knows I couldn’t -then that’s here. He also interviewed the excellent Robin Valo (who blogs and tweets too- my, aren’t we all modern?) which you can listen to here.

ITEM! Friday was the filming for the inaugural Tpot Freedom Sessions show/website/multimedia juggernaut. Our tagline is: Teapot Freedom Sessions: Smashing you repeatedly in the face with a fist made of entertainment. At least that’s what it’s going to be on this blog. More news when it’s all cut together but the Facebook page is up here and I will post more details when the website goes online early next month. The short version: to film a show that can be broadcast with an accompanying website where viewers can find what would effectively be DVD extras: interviews with the performers, extra live footage. A mixture of music and comedy filmed up at Tpot Music Studios out in the middle of deepest darkest Perthshire, the day was a roaring success. But as the things not edited yat and this post is about stand-up I’m only going to talk about that aspect of it here. Except to briefly plug the bands who were on and urge you to like their Facebook pages, but their albums, go see them live, and write them inappropriately suggestive fan mail. So thanks to The Boston Tea Party, The Creeping Ivies, Homesick Aldo and the enigmatic Family of Ghosts who have no internet presence whatsoever which means we can safely call them an underground band. They would like that.

Anyway, we made up a room in the house to be the comedy club for the evening by shoving in a higgledy=piggledy mix of chairs and sofas and bean bags. An intimate venue is the polite way to put it. Then we shoved it full of Perthshire reprobates. Who were, let us say, a lively crowd. it made for a fun gig. Four of Scotland’s up and coming comedy talents were good enough to come through. So I’d like to say a big thanks once again to Dave Nelder, Ray Fordyce, Genevieve Cytko, James McIntosh and Les Sinclair for their time and their jokes. Everyone did amazingly. And thank you too to the audience, who were supportive, quite drunk and occasionally a bit mental. But in the best possible way. It certainly made for a good show and I cant wait to see the footage. More details on that as and when. In the meantime click on all those comedian’s names, see what they are doing, go and see them live, become their friends, but them drinks, write them letters that go way past inappropriately suggestive into the realms of Sadean pornography. They will love you for it. Trust me.

For my part, aside from being presenter for the day, which was interesting, fun but a bit weird, I was compeer for the comedy section which was a whole new experience for me and an eye-opener. mostly because my comedy is, if not slow exactly, then I guess ‘considered’ whereas comepering for this to an audience well on their way from ‘merry’ to ‘fucked’ on the Inebriatometer I felt I had to go full tilt. A lot of jumping around was involved, a lot more shouting and, for some reason, a lot more swearing than usual. I enjoyed it anyway, and I’m looking forward to the next one. So keep an eye out for that and come visit the countryside!

Don’t forget to like the Facebook page and keep up with what’s going on.

FINAL ITEM! The mystery that is Davey Mitchell has a venue booked for this years fringe. Last year he was based at The Blind Poet, where I spent several happy afternoons, drinking, doing a five-minute spot and then watching and chatting with an insane variety of different acts, at various levels of experience, and it was always an enjoyable gig. Even when there was only three people to play to, there was a kind of benignly anarchic egalitarian atmosphere. All comers were welcome. No news yet on the time but when I know I will tell you all and you can get down there and support the show. All of the comedians mentioned above will no doubt be there ar some point so again, follow their blogs, tweets, face droppings and all that.

Support live comedy people! It’s good for the soul.

Anyway, this is my blog, so fuck those guys! I will be around leaving my comedy smearings on walls at the dates below. And during August I will be tweeting my random whereabouts at the festival. So if you like this blog or you like my comedy come along. if you like this blog but you don’t like my comedy, come along anyway. You can tell me I’m not funny and that we can discuss the philosophical implications of the posthuman instead. Although both is preferable.

Over and out.

Upcoming dates!

JUNE

Monday, 11th-  Comedy Variety Show@City Cafe, Edinburgh

Monday 18th- Red Raw@The Stand, Edinburgh

Tuesday 19th- Red Raw@The Stand, Glasgow

Tuesday, 26th-Red Raw@The Stand, Glasgow

JULY

Tuesday 31st-Red Raw@The Stand, Glasgow

AUGUST

I will be running around the Edinburgh Festival. Follow me on Twitter to find out when and where!

Anarchy and Posthumanism Part 3: Anarchist Superhumans

In my thesis I have made a distinction between the types of posthuman body found in comic books and how these relate to various other versions of posthumanity in philosophy and transhumanist texts. Of particular interest in terms of posthumanism and anarchy is what I call the posthuman Cosmic Body (more detail can be found by clicking on the link). This final post on Anarchy and Posthumanism (part 1 is here and part 2 is here) will consider how anarchism has been presented within superhero comics and note how these representations usually chime with this vision of the ‘Cosmic Posthuman’.

Anarchy and Posthumanism Part 2: The Anarchist as Ubermensch

Part 1 was a brief overview of anarchist thoughts and ideas. This part deals with the links between posthumanism and anarchism. These links can be best introduced by consider the role of Nietzsche’s philosophy in anarchist thought. As I’ve written elsewhere (elsewhere being here), that posthumanism as a critical/philosophical position arguably finds its first full bloom in the ideas of Nietzsche. As Spencer Sunshine has written,

There were many things that drew anarchists to Nietzsche: his hatred of the state; his disgust for the mindless social behavior of ‘herds’; his anti-Christianity; his distrust of the effect of both the market and the State on cultural production; his desire for an ‘übermensch‘ — that is, for a new human who was to be neither master nor slave.”